Intel could be closing the door on the emerging 802.20 mobile broadband wireless access standard after the company admitted to uncertainty surrounding the working group's ability to put aside self-interest. But the chip giant has finally accepted the rise of the Bluetooth short-range wireless technology, which will shortly be accommodated in its wireless LAN chipsets.

Business Objects, the French software company, admitted yesterday that it had received a Wells notice from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), recommending that charges be brought against the company for allegedly failing to disclose its order backlog.

IBM has promised it will not use its stockpile of patents against Linux unless it is "forced to defend itself". The company made its announcement at LinuxWorld, where it laid down the gauntlet to other software companies, challenging them to follow its lead.

UpdatedGigabyte has accused rival motherboard maker Asus of rigging recent benchmark tests. It alleges that Asus "clandestinely" enabled a hidden overclocking mode in its BIOS that made certain Asus mobos appear to run faster than they do in the real world.

US regulators yesterday ruled tentatively in favor of an FBI and Justice Department proposal that would compel Internet broadband and VoIP providers to open their networks up to easy surveillance by law enforcement agencies.

Every year for the past nine years, the Computer Security Institute and the FBI undertake a computer crime and security survey among companies and institutions in the US. These surveys provide interesting insights into the level of computer crime being experienced by companies, as well as how they are responding to security breaches.

BT has launched a range of phones that will allow people to send a receive text messages on their fixed telephone lines. The service will send texts to and from mobile phones and between fixed line phones. For those without SMS enabled handsets, BT will convert the text to speech.

An Australian judge has warned of the possible arrival of a disturbing new trend of teenagers stealing goods to finance their addiction to mobile phones. The warning came as the judge sentenced a 17-year-old thief to two years and three months on probation for a series of robberies.

The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) decided Wednesday that small clusters of TiVo subscribers may exchange content files over the Internet without causing the total collapse of the entertainment pigopoly, Reuters reports.

Google was lauded for bypassing institutional cronyism when it opted for an auction process for its initial public stock offering. But a different kind of cronyism has landed it in breach of financial regulations.

White House gazette Fox News has betrayed to the Feds a high-profile source who exposed intelligence blunders by the National Security Agency (NSA) in dealing with terrorist communications, the Washington Post reports.

Virtually everything done via TCP/IP, with the (for now) exception of instant messaging, is on its way to becoming wiretap-friendly, thanks to a tentative 5-0 decision by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Wednesday.

Pfizer, the maker of Viagra, has declared war on spammers and online pharmacies, illegally peddling pills under the Viagra brand. The company says it will pursue the offending persons and organisations in court. It is taking the action after its market research revealed that a quarter of men think Pfizer is the source of spam emails advertising the drug.

Burt Rutan, the pioneering aviation engineer behind the SpaceShipOne mission, has hinted that he will be aboard the vehicle when it makes its next flight in a bid to become the first commercially-funded craft to leave the Earth's atmosphere.

At the beginning of last month the British Government launched a "Music Manifesto" to promote music in schools. But already this typically Blairite bundle of good intentions is being hijacked (with not a little cooperation from the minders in Whitehall) in order to inflict copyright lessons on schoolchildren, from pre-school onwards.

While IBM is offering new incentives for its sales force to sell Linux on its POWER processors, Apple partner Yellow Dog has updated the Linux distribution that runs on G5-based Macs. Big Blue makes the processor that powers its own AIX and OS/400 systems, as well the 970 POWER variant that Apple brands the G5.